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As Aaron fights with the knowledge he's suddenly been entrusted with, the shepherd searches for meaning, and finally consummates his relationship with the raccoon girl Amy.

Part four untangles the terrible revelation we saw last time. It doesn't untangle it in a particularly nice way, but you know. It's the end of the earth, what do you expect? At least we get some nice ringtail time out of it. Highs and lows in this chapter, both.

Released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Share, modify, and redistribute -- as long as it's attributed and noncommercial, anything goes.

Water, Paper and Clay, by Rob Baird. Part 4: "Toll the bell; pay the private eye"

---

They didn't kill Ellis or I -- at first, I thought this might be because we still had work to do on the Project, but Dezirian had said that this wasn't important, so perhaps it was simply that Ad Int was feeling good-natured. Outwardly, the only change was the security personnel who followed us, whenever we were not working and in the offices. They never seemed to eavesdrop, and they sat just out of earshot when Ellis and I met for lunch.

"Could ask them to join in," he suggested.

"I suppose." It was Friday, two days after I'd first told Vasily. "What are we going to do, Jake?"

"What do you mean?"

"About this. They're not going to tell anyone -- I don't know what they threatened Dezirian with, but even he's not going to go to the press. I guess they have us by the ears, but... Christ, Jake, we have to do something..."

Jake tilted his head ever so slightly at me. "We do?"

I was slightly taken aback. "You don't think so?"

"Please, Aaron. Did you really think that it wasn't going to come to this? I admit, I wasn't certain they were going to be so... brutal. That shocked me. But we've always known, really, that the triage system had to be about more than just creating slums and rationing health care. Something like this has always been in the cards."

I could feel my ears wilting. Had I known that? Had I ever really stepped back to consider the big picture? No, because I wasn't supposed to. Ellis had. Ellis had seen that Ad Int's goals extended far beyond governance -- and why shouldn't they? They had a mandate to preserve the species, after all. "I hadn't... I mean... some of it, sure, yes, has always seemed slightly... eugenic..."

"Only some of it? Oh, face it, Aaron, we're not one of the good guys. We're the system. If this was a movie, we'd be cannon fodder the hero would kill on his way to confront the main villain. And who do you think would that be? Some cackling madman? Nah. Somebody like Dezirian, maybe, or maybe the project director."

"And you're okay with that?"

Ellis stopped buttering the roll he had been working on, and thought about that for a moment. "Only to an extent. To an extent, I'm just pragmatic about it. There's nothing we can do -- you and I both know that."

"But shouldn't we try? Would you feel comfortable raising children in a society that had left its home planet to die? Could you do that?"

"I don't intend to raise children at all, Aaron; you and I both know that, too. My point is just this: we've been riding the tiger for a long time at this point. Now you want to get off, right before the destination, and try to tame the tiger into a pack animal? Put a bridle on it? And for what? What would you get out of it?"

Something about the decision to lie about the arks grated with me. The problem was that, with the question posed directly to me, I wasn't quite certain what it was. Dezirian had seemed to think that they were the only hope for the continuance of civilization -- what was holding me back? A lingering sense of morality, I guessed. The sense that it was, in some ephemeral fashion, 'unfair' to abandon people to their deaths without even the courtesy of telling them. "Our consciences? What's that saying, that all that's required for evil to exist is for good men to do nothing?"

"Oh, get off your damned high horse. The Renaissance Project isn't about you and your conscience and it never has been. We're talking about the species, Aaron, and while I may have given up on people I haven't been pushed yet to the point of giving up on humanity. If you break this story, the only thing that will be helped is your own sense of ethics -- which will do you precious little good when they shoot you like an animal for being a traitor. What do you want them to do? They can't get us all off this planet. We don't have the resources to build more spaceships, Aaron -- we've been pushed to the brink just bringing the population they've selected. So what are you going to do? And aren't you going to marry your friend to get her a seat on the ark? Who do you think is going to get bumped -- one of the officially preselected people? Some congressman? No, it would've been one of those people you were willing to think was randomly selected if you hadn't gone poking your nose into things. Where was your love of free will then?"

"That's a bit of a unique situation, don't you think?"

He arched an eyebrow, and shrugged. "Is it? The end result is still the same. But fine, forget the other people. Do you want to give up your ticket so that some random clerk can pick it up instead?"

"Maybe..."

"And maybe you're just that good-natured at heart. Just that damned altruistic. Is that clerk going to be able to figure out where to start planting some... heck, I don't know, some species of arctic lichen? Are they going to know when the right time is to start allowing the carpenter ants to reproduce at full scale? Is Mars going to be better -- are all of us going to have a better future -- because you listened to your conscience? What would your children think of that?"

It was, admittedly, a hell of a time for me to have developed a sense of conviction. "I guess I don't really know, to be honest... it just doesn't sit right. I've been around long enough not to think that they have our best interests at heart."

"Not as individuals, no," Jake said. He took a moment to choose his words. "You're right, Aaron, it's a bastardly thing that they're doing -- that we're doing, too, now that we know about it. But I think you have to take the long view, right? You have to look at the bigger picture. You're a biologist; you'd know better than I whether they're telling the truth about the cancer rates and all that. It seems to me that we can't stay on this planet, and that if this effort here falls through, then we have nothing. Maybe it was our time. But you know, I look at some of the things we've done -- Angkor Wat, the Large Hadron Collider, the Sistine Chapel -- and I think that the minds that produced those things, that they're worth saving, you know? That we ought to do something to save them. Not to save you or I, or even the president, but to save that species. That sense of potential. I guess I'm not willing to throw that away because I can't stomach the sacrifices that we have to make."

I toyed with the crust of my sandwich and mulled that over. Jake made no further reply, and after several long seconds I broke the silence. "Do you think the future will judge us?"

"Of course. The future always judges the present, just as we judge the past. But if they've any decency about them, they'll realize this: we weren't caricatures, lumbering towards some predetermined finale, and we weren't fortune-tellers. We were just people, ordinary men and women trying to make their best of a terrible situation, and doing, I think, the best that we can."

"This is the best we can do? Really? Thousands of years of science and philosophy, and this is where we end up?"

Jake sighed. "It is a bear, isn't it? To think that with all our knowledge and all our power, the best we can do is ninety thousand people? But consider the alternative conclusion, Aaron, why don't you? You think Ad Int is a bunch of cartoon villains, twirling their whiskers and cackling about the fate they've condemned the planet to? None of them were responsible for the Fires, Aaron; none of them pulled the trigger. They're just people. Just like you and me. They thought about this for a long time; they lost sleep over it, same as you did. And, somehow, they decided they could live with it. Perhaps they know something we don't?"

"Perhaps." I thought about Dezirian, his shoulders jerking as his emotions got the better of him -- yes, it was unfair to think that he was the only one; that the people who had come to this decision did so willingly, even gleefully. I was sure they suffered. "But that doesn't mean that we have to come to the same conclusion, now does it?"

"No," he admitted. "It doesn't, of course. But in some ways, it's easier to be an iconoclast, isn't it? It's easier to say what you wouldn't have done. That sort of raises the question -- what would you have done, in their position? Limited resources, too many people trying to consume them... what's the answer, Aaron? What's the good way out?"

"Honesty, I guess. That would make it a lot better, as far as I'm concerned -- it's not what they're doing that bothers me, so much, it's the fact they can't even be bothered to admit it. Maybe you're right -- they're acting in the best interests of humanity, not any individual humans. That's fair. And maybe it would be... impolitic, I guess, to be so honest. But damn it, to lie to people..."

He nodded slowly. "I'm not saying I like it, Aaron, believe me. I'm just asking whether we can really take it into our own hands. Because it would cause riots, you have to know that -- it would bring the whole thing down around our heads. I mean, well and good to say we shouldn't go gently into that good night -- but who the hell are we to sentence the whole damned race to raging?"

*

I guess that he was probably correct: not only was there precious little that we could do, but it wasn't really even our right. We had the power to destroy the entire Renaissance Project and, as Jake had pointed out, Earth had neither the time nor the resources for another attempt. If we killed it, it would stay dead -- was this for the better?

At the same time, it was so blatant, so brutally utilitarian, to stand by and condemn so many people to linger because there wasn't enough room to take them all with us. It was, I thought, as if we stood on the deck of the Titanic, that ancient steamship -- and, knowing that catastrophe was inevitable, we were springing for the only available lifeboats. Raising the alarm could only engender panic -- and yet it seemed, eminently, the only appropriate thing to do.

The security personnel guards tailed me to my apartment, and then set up watch outside -- I had no doubt that my communications were being monitored, as well. I took a pencil and a piece of paper torn from the inside jacket of one of my books, and began writing a letter.

I've never been good at thinking on my feet. Jake and Amy were both quicker with an argument than I was, and Wells could use her tongue like a scalpel. Me, I needed time to put things together, and writing down all my objections to what Ad Int had done helped to crystalize them in my mind. It reassured me, internally, that I was doing the right thing -- that I was properly acting in the long-term best interests of our species by preventing those in a position of power from simply absconding. I was, after all, looking at the bigger picture.

I decided that if I could present a compelling case in only a few paragraphs, it might get traction in the local news agencies. From there, it would propagate virally -- it had all the makings of a story with legs. I rewrote the letter with an eye towards conciseness.

It explained in detail who I was, and it contained the details of the Renaissance Project's passenger manifest. It said that I had confirmation from high-ranking officials within the Project itself that there would be no further arks constructed and that, to the degree that it was even possible, Earth would be compelled to fend for herself. I tried to keep the note as brief as I could, without skimping on verifiable details. Then I folded it over, sealed it, and scrawled a date and time, two days in the future. If I did not contact her before that date, I wrote my lawyer, she was to deliver the note, by hand, to the local press.

I tucked this into a copy of A Tale of Two Cities and took the book with me to work the following day. I had been keeping a close eye on the security personnel who followed me, and I knew them by face. That made it easy enough to give them the slip for a few minutes, just long enough to hand the note -- with a fifty-dollar tip -- to a random person in the bus terminal when I transferred from the yellow line onto the route for McChord. When they picked me up again, they gave no sign that they were aware of anything out of the ordinary and, for my part, I returned to reading the Dickens novel.

I still wasn't certain what I was going to do. In the evening, after work, I took the bus to Eleazaria, waiting until the last possible moment to announce my stop -- they watched me disembarking, but the guards had no chance to get off with me, and I made my way to the Eighth Street Café unmolested. Amy seemed to catch my mood.

"Is everything alright?"

"No. No, not exactly, it's not -- I need some advice, if you're willing."

She poured two steaming mugs of coffee, and gestured to the booth next to her. "What's wrong, Aaron?"

I took the coffee gratefully. "It's a question of morality. Suppose something terrible was going to happen, and only you knew about it. Suppose, twenty years before the corrupt government came to power in 1984, somebody realised what was going to happen, with absolute clarity?"

"But how could they?" The raccoon tilted her head curiously. "Twenty years, Aaron, that's a damn long time, ain't it? Anything could change. I imagine if they'd told somebody, they would've just been ignored, wouldn't they? I'd've ignored them, that's for sure."

I frowned. "Well... alright. Have you read the Iliad? Or some story of the Trojan War?" She nodded. "Oh -- good, okay. Suppose somebody knew that the Trojan Horse was supposed to be a good thing, but it would actually destroy them."

"You mean like Cassandra?"

I raised an eyebrow. "Hmm?"

"Princess Cassandra -- the daughter of the king of Troy, weren't she? Apollo gave her the ability to see the future an' the like, except then he cursed her, too, so as nobody would ever believe what she said. She knew what was gonna happen to Troy, and nobody believed her... maybe I guess it ain't just that twenty years is a long time, maybe we just never believe anybody who tells us about the future."

"They didn't believe her," I mused, and chewed on my lower lip. "But then what should she have done?"

"What do you mean?"

"Suppose," I tried again, abandoning literary metaphor. "Suppose you were the only one with knowledge of a destructive act -- suppose I found out that the government was secretly removing people from their homes so that they could recycle their possessions for the recoverable resources?"

"They're doing that?"

"No, but suppose they were. If I were to tell the truth, there would probably be great dissent against the government. Maybe even riots, open demonstrations. And maybe the government is using those resources to build greenhouses and hospitals. It's still wrong, isn't it?"

"Sure."

"Then..."

She leaned back. "This ain't just a friendly argument, is it?"

"Sort of. It's not anything that has to do with you, specifically," I lied, "I just wanted your advice on it, that's all. I figured you might be able to give me a new perspective."

Amy's whiskers twitched as she lost herself in momentary thought. "Well I think... mostly, an' all, it's what I said a couple months back, when you tried to make it like Ahab was some kind of bad guy. How you live your life is the most important matter, an' that means, I think, that you have to do the right thing."

"Even if it might mean your life?"

"Everybody dies, Aaron. Only some of us die for anything meaningful. Ain't no shame in being one of them, though."

I smiled. That was, I think, what I had wanted to hear -- not Ellis's practical utilitarianism, arguing that we needed to act for the greatest 'good' irrespective of morality. I wanted to hear that it was permissible for me to act according to my conscience. I stood, and when she did as well I gave Amy a tight, lingering embrace. "Thank you."

"Thank you?"

I was supposed to be leaving. There was something in the slight tilt of her head, though; in the way her ears pricked at the question. She had returned the hug; her fingers were threaded behind my back, pressing lightly into the fur. So instead of answering, I kissed her. Lost myself in the warmth of her muzzle. Savored every bit of fur, every tickling touch of her whiskers...

Not for the first time I counted myself lucky that there were no other patrons in the little café. I needed to be closer to her -- feeling every inch of her thick-furred body pressed snug and warm in my embrace. Our tongues met -- hesitantly at first, then with a greater certainty.

I surrendered first, pulling away, gasping for breath that I seized in shallow pants against the side of her neck. I nibbled at her, and she lifted her vulnerable throat to bare it to me -- wanton, inviting, bidding me to devour her.

Where was the retiring, hesitant Aaron now? She leaned back, and when I adjusted my grip it served to feel for the heavy warmth of her breast, yielding slightly beneath my tan fingers. I heard her moan -- and a sighing whisper of my name.

"Yes?"

"What... what about my customers?"

My grin was sharp, toothy. "What about them?" My fingers were prying apart the buttons of her shirt, from the bottom up -- one at a time, as though she needed to be carefully unwrapped. Her grey fur was warm, and pleasantly soft, and thick with her scent.

I decided on hasty, desperate survey that the counter would be sufficient -- the windows were, anyway, too dingy to be seen through. The raccoon leaned back on her paws as I finished sliding open her blouse and, seeing her again this way, I found my grin widening further.

We didn't waste any time -- who knew what was going to happen, anyway? I buried my muzzle in her collarbone, nipping her as a distraction while my fingers carefully undid her bra. It slipped down her shoulders, and the fur of her upper arms, leaving her stocky upper body bare enough that the downward track of my nuzzling quickly found her breast again. I caught the nipple as lightly as I could between my teeth -- holding it, tasting her on the tip of my tongue as I teased, and lapped, and savored.

Amy moaned again, and her body sagged as I explored her. It was only partly my doing, for she was now supporting herself on one paw only. The other, with its lovely ebony fingers, was angling for the zipper of her khakis. I let her up just long enough to undo them all the way, pushing them so that they fell in a heap at the floor, joined a moment later by her panties.

I fumbled for my jeans with one paw, hasty in my craving for her. It was difficult -- I was already hard, and the touch of my own fingers send little shocks through my nerves that made it hard to concentrate. When she perceived what I was doing the raccoon nudged her hips forward, closer to the edge of the counter; her thighs parted, and she wrapped them around me so that I was tugged forward, against her, and my rigid manhood pressed into silky fur so that I couldn't help but shudder, and gasp.

But I found her swiftly -- wet heat, soft and slick and yielding as I pushed inside her. Slowly at first, then all the way in -- she gasped as I entered, and then a soft moan filled my ear and I understood finally what it meant to be consummated. Perfect -- a perfect, long-needed joining.

She shivered when I tugged myself back from her, wet now from the raccoon's warm insides -- the cool air of the café such a sharp contrast that I could barely stand it for a second before I found myself sinking back into that slippery, welcoming, warm embrace.

There was nothing I could do to hold back -- to calm myself, to take some measured pace. I gave in to my pent-up desires completely -- hips bucking in powerful strokes that had her gasping, moaning desperately. Sharp claws grasped me; her ears were pinned all the way back.

The raccoon was everything I'd imagined, in the hints of burning daydreams I'd indulged in previous months. I thrust deeply into her, feeling my knot already starting to grow -- hearing her squeak every time I sank in all the way and the thick flesh spread her lips wide.

We worked together swiftly, though my pace began to grow unsteady and I forced myself to slow down -- I could hear the bell chime as someone stepped through the door and into the café, but beneath the soft chorus of my groans and the raccoon's heady gasps it was easy to ignore.

An older gentleman, clearly from the area. He caught sight of us -- my lips curled to bare teeth, my ears laid back with the strain of our increasingly frantic rutting. The raccoon was moaning deeply now, every time I glided in to fill her with the steely warmth of my shaft. "Ah, I --"

"Later," I growled. "We're -- closed."

He was blinking, dumbfounded, eyes locked helplessly on us. "But the... the sign..."

I had thought that perhaps Amy hadn't even noticed, but when she caught me glancing towards the door, ready to throw him out, her voice filled my ears with a desperate plea. "Don't stop."

I grunted in half-coherent attempts at language as the smoldering pleasure creeping deeper into my veins began to take over. "I'm gonna tie," I warned her -- voice strained; it took me an attempt or two.

"Don't. Stop," she repeated. A soft cry, with her head thrown back and her thick, ringed tail curled around me like a promise.

My swelling knot pushed into her wetly. I felt her squeeze me reflexively as I held there, hips pushed right up into hers, tying her with a low and rather uncharacteristic snarl -- but Christ, I needed her. The hell with stopping. Not in the cards.

I tried to fight it off for a few seconds longer, as my hips pressed hard into hers -- but when I could feel it start to happen, that aching desire taking over my movements, I didn't hold back. Three or four more thrusts -- urgent, on shaky muscles -- and then I buried myself to the hilt, and as the pleasure swept over me I felt myself exploding into her in a thick, warm torrent.

Amy gasped, moaning in a long, shuddering chitter that ended in a strangled bark and I felt her claws dig in, locking into my sides as surely as my canine shaft was locked deep inside her. Then her paw gave out and, laughing breathlessly, I tumbled forward with her to pin her body against the counter. The spectator had, at some point, vanished again.

"So it was... just... advice you needed?" she cooed, her black paw curling through the fur of my rear. My muscles ached, but I found the strength to push myself up, and to give her a tender kiss. "Oh... no?"

"Maybe a little more," I admitted. Though it was not what I had planned -- but then, what had I actually planned? A romantic dinner, and adjoining to my apartment? How desperately cliché.

Nobody else entered the café, at least, for as long as it took for my knot to shrink. I licked and nuzzled at the raccoon gently, and her tail twitched softly as it curled around me. Warm. Protective.

When I stepped back, finally, she grinned. "I should close up. Uh, and clean up, too. I hope everything goes okay for... whatever you needed. Don't be too crazy, Aaron, hon. I'll see you soon."

I returned the smile warmly. "Of course. I love you, Amy."

She paused, and then she gave me another swift hug. "I love you too."

Outside, I was shocked momentarily to see one of the security guards waiting for me. He dipped his head. "Evening again, sir."

"Evening," I said.

"Coffee good in there? Some old dude left a few minutes back with the biggest damned smile on his face..."

"I don't know. I don't go there for the coffee."

He grinned, giving me a wink. "Never would've pegged you as the type."

I laughed genially -- my good mood, I'm sure, helped ease the tension immensely, and I'm sure he could smell her on me. "I have needs, too. When's the next yellow line bus?"

"Six minutes," he said. Even in his neatly pressed uniform he seemed shapeless, with a blunt muzzle and short ears. I could not have placed his ethnicity, and maybe, I figured, it didn't matter. He would be irrelevant soon, anyway. That night, ensconced back in the warmth of my apartment, I slept better than I had in years.

*

Wells and I now worked primarily in bureaucracy, filling out forms and other miscellaneous bits of information. The models had been accepted, and as I had told Jake, I had little reason to believe any other agency would ask for our assistance. The planning of ecosystems and the selection of species had a deep nationalistic bent, and was highly sentimental. We were unwelcome.

In the early afternoon, with the clouds a bright grey above us, we watched our cargo -- palettes and huge boxes of genetic samples -- being loaded onto the arks. Some of the species we would introduce from cultures or living examples; the rest we would recreate in artificial wombs, as Wells had suggested. It was a strange thing, to see one's homeland reduced to crates.

"It's amazing, isn't it?" Wells said quietly. "That's six years of work for us. We did it, Aaron..."

"It seems like yesterday," I agreed. "You remember when we first got the new 1450 mainframe? God, that was nice. We spent that whole day just screwing around, didn't we? That was worth it, though."

"It all was worth it." She smiled, closing her eyes in reflection. "It all was worth it. And it's only a small rest, and then we have a whole new set of challenges. Oh, Aaron, it's so exciting! Have you thought about how we're going to start the actual seeding process yet?"

"Not yet," I said. "I figure we still have a few things left to concern us on Earth."

"Oh, Earth." Maria's tone bordered on dismissive; she shook her head. "You know, I think I realized yesterday, finally. Earth... there's nothing here for me, anymore. Mars is where the opportunity is. And we get to be the first, Aaron -- the very first there. It's going to be something else. No, Earth isn't really worth it anymore."

"It's not?" I had not told Maria about what Ellis and I had discovered, but I knew that having to stay on Earth would not please her -- she'd only said as much explicitly now, but there had been several days of hints, as we watched the loading process from our window.

"No, not really. Ever since mom died, the connections keeping me here have really just been my coworkers -- you, Little Marty, even Jake. But you're all going with me to Mars, so... why do I care about this rock? It's just dismal, now, just dismal failure and a lot of lonely ghosts. We should be jumping at the chance to be the first ones off it, don't you think?"

"Mm." I didn't say anything, exactly. In point of fact, I had nothing to say -- I didn't have the heart to tell Maria anything. She would find out soon enough, after all -- my lawyer had been instructed to go to the press on the following day, and I didn't think Ad Int could move fast enough to muzzle them. The story would break inexorably.

"The launch date can't come fast enough," Wells expounded. "It can't come fast enough. But we should get back to work, I suppose -- still got some things to finish, don't we?"

Nor, I discovered, did I have the heart to still her from this task, and so I joined her, planning the irrelevancies of our pre-launch preparations. I wished that there was a solution that didn't involve hurting her, but the strength of my convictions had only grown since leaving the Eighth Street Café. We have to be willing to fight -- and, yes, even die -- for what we believe in.

And maybe it would not be all that bad. Maybe people would realize that there was a solution that didn't involve the ludicrous triage system, or the wholesale abandonment of the planet (though what had Maria and I concluded? Ninety-nine percent of everything that had ever lived on the planet was dead? Perhaps we were just keeping with tradition). Maybe Ad Int would step down peaceably, and we could have some semblance of democracy again.

I was willing to trust that such occurrences were, if not probable, then at least quite possible. This response to chaos is, I've found, what distinguishes the religious from the agnostic. Religion is all about avoiding chaos, ordering it; giving it a name, a personification.

But chaos can be generative, too. Chaos can spark new ideas; revolutions can birth new civilizations. It takes believing in the power of serendipity -- the same force of smiling fortune that brought me to Amy Buchanan in the first place. I was a growing devotee of serendipity.

My life, I knew, was soon to become chaotic. Even if the government chose not to prosecute me (which I thought unlikely) my job with the Renaissance Project was about to be over, if for no other reason than that the Project itself could not possibly survive the revelation that it had merely been a lifeboat for the preselected.

Even the notion, however, that everything I had come to know and rely on was about to change did not especially trouble me. I wondered what Wells would think, and hoped that she would understand. I would not have the opportunity to explain -- after my lawyer went to the press, I would probably be arrested immediately. She would have to draw her own conclusions; hopefully, I thought, she would at least consider my motives to have been pure.

This was the first time in my life I had ever really had a sense of pure conviction; that complete, unmarred absence of self-doubt. I refused to second-guess myself, not in my discussion with Ellis, not in my internal monologue, and not when I suddenly found two men flanking me, as I left the office building that evening.

"Dr. Aaron Turner?" one of them asked. He was ten centimeters taller than I, and stocky.

"Yes?"

"Please come with me."

*

There were no handcuffs, and no outward threats -- but there was also no possibility of resistance, either. Thus it was that I found myself in one of the outlying offices of the Renaissance complex; to be honest, I'm not sure exactly where it was -- I'd never seen it before. I was ushered into a small room, containing only a table and a couple of chairs.

The door was shut behind me and I had some time to consider my situation. The men had seemed to be official, though they weren't wearing any conspicuous uniforms -- Ad Int, probably, not Project police or security guards. What did that mean?

Probably, I concluded quickly, it was that Dezirian's protection had not extended as far as he'd initially thought. At the time, the notion that they were going to kill me didn't even cross my mind -- deposition, certainly, and perhaps even an aggressive interrogation. But I had done, as of that point, absolutely nothing wrong, and I highly doubted that they had guessed what I was about to do. It was, after all, very out of character.

The room was completely barren, save for the metal table and chairs, and there was no real way to mark the passage of time. Speculating about my predicament became tiresome quickly, but this left only trying to figure out where I was and how long I had spent there. Thirty minutes, perhaps, was my guess; maybe an hour, before the door opened, and admitted two people, a man and a woman.

They were outwardly expressionless, lacking even Ad Int's veneer of pleasantness. The man was blue-grey and white, with folded ears that made him either a mutt or, more likely in my estimation, a sheepdog. His eyes were sharp and penetrating -- a Border collie, then, perhaps.

His partner was much easier to place -- obviously a fox, with burnt-orange fur and eyes that constantly swept the room. They were both exceptionally well dressed, in close-fitting, neatly tailored black suits. The man grabbed the chair from next to me and set it down on the other side of the table, so that both he and his partner could sit down, facing me.

"Dr. Turner, I presume?" The woman's voice was clearly enunciated and crisp, although not especially formal.

"That's me."

Just as their emotionless expressions had been purer than the Ad Int employees I was used to, the sudden smile she gave seemed much more genuine. They were better actors, if nothing else. "Ah, very good. It's nice to meet you. This is Adam, and I'm Barbara."

"Do you work for AIDA?"

"Not quite." Adam had a deep voice, with a growl and a curtness to it that suggested it saw little use. "We merely keep the peace. We're enforcers."

"Enforcers?"

Barbara smiled again. "We're not really relevant, most of the time, Dr. Turner. Think of us as AIDA's peripheral vision -- figments of the American dream. We try to keep things running smoothly. That's where you come in, obviously."

"I'm not running smoothly?"

Adam's face had yet to display anything but stoic blankness. "Who have you told about what you know, Dr. Turner?"

I had been brought up to trust policemen, but I didn't feel compelled to think that this trust extended to Ad Int. "What I know?"

The vixen next to him nodded. "Please understand, Dr. Turner, that this room is not currently being recorded. You don't have to worry about speaking your mind. Now, please, who have you told about your understanding that the Renaissance Project will not be constructing any further starships."

I glanced between the two. "If you know that I know that, then I don't really have any surprises for you. Jake Ellis and I looked over the manifests and came to that conclusion, which I then confirmed with Dr. Vasily Dezirian, the overall director for biology. At that time, he told me not to tell anyone else and, until you two came along, I haven't."

"But you're going to."

"Sir?"

It was Barbara who answered my question. "You've deliberately evaded your escort on two occasions in the last two days. Combined with your psychological profile and a stress analysis of your behavior, the conclusions are very easy to draw."

"So. Who are you going to tell?"

I closed my eyes, made an internal gamble, and then smiled softly. "A lot of people. You've probably guessed that, too. It's a dead-man switch, a communicator I gave to a person I met in a bus station. If I don't contact them by six o'clock tomorrow, they're going to go to the press."

Adam nodded, as though this knowledge was not surprising. He didn't say anything, though, and the room fell quiet until I felt pressed to continue.

"They're not from around here, but this person is well-connected to their local press. I don't think you'll be able to stop the story from getting out."

"I don't either," Adam said.

Barbara nodded her agreement. "Only you can do that. Now, the nicest way to do this would be to appeal to your better nature. You know that if you break this story, a lot of people who don't really deserve it are going to get hurt. And, moreover, nobody is going to be helped."

"You're a weak man." Nothing in Adam's voice suggested that this was intended to be an insult, merely a statement of fact. "You lack a strong moral centre, so you rely on abstract concepts to define what is 'good' and what is 'bad.' In this case, you've settled on 'the truth.'"

His partner continued, still without ever appearing condemnatory or judgmental. "For you, truth is an ephemeral concept representing goodness. Although you cannot define how the truth would improve society, or the world, you wish to introduce it anyway. You believe that the decisions that have been made are unfair and, although you likely cannot clearly define what is unfair about them, you wish to do your part to rectify this perceived situation."

"What's unfair about them," I said, "is that you've made an arbitrary decision about who lives and who dies."

"No, please choose your words more carefully. Chaos is arbitrary, Dr. Turner; the selection process may not be up to your standards, but it is most certainly logical." She smiled again, thinly. "Have you considered the consequences of your actions, incidentally?"

"I have been thinking about them continuously, since I decided to do this."

She opened a slim laptop computer, and turned it to me. "Here are the results of an internal simulation AIDA conducted. It's using the same basic modeling software that you do -- you can therefore confirm our input parameters. Thirty thousand deaths from rioting in the first month, the collapse of the Ad Interim Democratic Authority and, of course, the permanent dashing of any hopes for our escape from this planet."

"Possibly. Or possibly not. I'm not saying it immediately points the path towards a rosy future, ma'am. I'm saying that people should be given the information to decide what to do with you. I'm saying that there should be a choice."

"Choice? Choice is an illusion, Dr. Turner. For example, you think that Adam and I are giving you the option to choose whether or not you comply with us. I don't really believe that you have a choice. I believe that appealing to your sense of pragmatism will win out. Don't you agree? I think that explaining to you the dire consequences of your actions has changed your mind."

The numbers on the screen were indeed fairly stark, and although I didn't have the time to analyze the parameters of their model I didn't really have a reason to doubt it. I knew, and Ellis had said, that there would be fallout from telling the truth. It didn't surprise me. And, at this point, it was irrelevant. I was doing the right thing, after all. I shook my head at Barbara. "No, I'm afraid not."

"Your final answer?"

Adam had asked the question; I nodded to him. "Yes."

He shrugged, removing a small remote control from his pocket and pressing a button on it. "Very well. Turn to your left, please."

I did. "Oh, god."

*

The wall to the left of me had become transparent, revealing another room immediately adjacent to mine. This room was empty, save for a single figure. Judging by her demeanor, Amy Buchanan was not able to see us -- it was a one-way mirror, I guessed. "What's she doing here?"

"We figured it might be best to bring her in for questioning. She doesn't know why she's here yet."

Adam's voice was constantly curt, and though I realized they were playing me I nonetheless turned to Barbara when I asked my next question. "What's going to happen to her?"

"That depends on you," she said. "If you decide to be reasonable, then of course we will let her go. We're not monsters, Dr. Turner. All you have to do is agree to cooperate, and she can be sent on her merry way."

"And if I don't... cooperate?"

"We can't run the risk that you've told her anything, so she'll have to be killed, of course." Adam's voice was completely remorseless, and never moved beyond his customary matter-of-fact monotone. "Since we never know what might make you willing to compromise, she will naturally be tortured first."

It wasn't possible to tell immediately whether or not I was being bluffed. "We don't torture people anymore, though. I already know that's off the table."

"Perhaps you weren't listening well enough, when I went through the model?" Barbara turned from the wall and indicated her computer again. "I'm sure AIDA would let us make an exception to a silly rule like the torture thing, in your case."

A hundred and fifty years ago, a Russian filmmaker named Lev Kuleshov did an experiment, in which he showed the same face over and over again, but in a different context. The exact same face -- but, depending on what people saw around it, they read completely different emotions into it. His voice had never really changed, but now I heard in Adam a sort of bored indifference. "She has very long fingers. You probably think we'd break them, but it isn't really that simple."

"We're professionals, after all," Barbara added.

"It's not the way you break the fingers, it's the way you can grind the bones against one another, after they've been broken -- there's something about that that seems to help, you know? In extracting a confession, or whatever you need. It does make the healing process more complicated, but as I said, that's not really relevant in her case."

Sometimes, when our conversations had trailed off into emptiness, I took Amy's paw in mine, and our fingers intertwined. I thought of this now, and cringed. "But you're not trying to extract a confession. Why don't you torture me instead?"

"We will be."

"What Adam means is that it's not just the physical element of pain that is important to consider, Dr. Turner. Of course, breaking Amy's fingers, one by one, will cause her a great deal of pain, but that doesn't really affect you, does it? You're motivated by a greater good -- the truth. Freedom. Choice. The excruciating pain of someone else is... well, almost ancillary to that. It's why people become martyrs -- something else is in play. Do you suppose she'll scream, Adam?"

"Not at first, no."

"That's something, then, isn't it, Dr. Turner?"

I shut my eyes -- my breathing was starting to pick up, for reasons that were completely beyond my control. "You'd do that. Why would you do that?"

"Because it's the easiest way to get to you. Because you've told yourself that you're a man of principle. Principle occasionally means sacrifice. It's not always self-sacrifice, either -- and your strength of will should allow you to see that. I certainly respect it. And I hope that Amy will as well. She doesn't know that you're here yet -- it's a one-way mirror, right now. We'll make it completely transparent before we start -- that way she'll be able to see you, and she'll know that you could stop this whole thing at any time."

"But you won't. Because you're in the right, aren't you?"

I swallowed heavily, looking at Adam. "Don't you think I am?"

"Morally? Philosophically? Of course. There are arguments to be made about the greater good, but if this was a Socratic dialogue, you would be absolutely correct. On the other hand, that doesn't mean we can let you go. Nor her."

Barbara leaned forward, her black-tipped ears pricked and alert, her voice insistent and slightly conspiratorial. "All you have to do is realize that you don't matter. That you're only a cog, Dr. Turner; that you can give in. That principles are not worth having. All you have to do is realize that, and all of this can be over."

"I still don't get why you'd torture her. She's an innocent victim -- a bystander."

"No," Barbara said, settling back in her chair. "Or at least, not in a way that absolves her from pain. She's guilty of consorting with you. The path to greatness and strength of principle is frequently littered with innocent bystanders, in that fashion; she's not really any different. Her innocence is a construct, just like your morality. Both can be attacked..."

"Attacked?" I asked, already knowing that I didn't want to hear the answer.

Barbara nodded crisply. "Yes. Savaged, until it's visible as the construct it is. Of course, when the inevitable time comes for her innocence to be taken down, we'll continue our 'good cop, bad cop' charade. Adam, not I, will be the one who is forced to violate her, repeatedly."

"I won't be deriving any gratification from the act," Adam said, levelly. "And I don't think she'll scream then, either -- though, actually, the silence will probably be worse for you."

"You'll have to trust in your principles, for strength." It was perplexing -- terrifying, even -- how they managed to avoid seeming to sneer, or even to attack me personally. Everything was merely a fact, coldly stated.

"My principles..."

"In some ways," Barbara said, as though she was musing aloud and had not heard me, "it's the fact of her innocence that makes this worse. She'll be completely confused, won't she? Lost -- terrified. Trying desperately to bargain for some relief, and not understanding that it's not in her power. That there's nothing at all she can do to stop the pain. I wonder what she'll think about you, Aaron. Will she know what you've done to warrant her torture? Do you suppose she'll think of you as a hero, bravely standing up to something? Or will she think you're merely a common criminal."

"Please... stop." I asked, my voice soft. I was trying to think.

They had none of it, though it was Adam who spoke next. "She'll do anything, you know, as it goes on. It's nothing personal about you -- it's just what torture does to people. She'll offer you up; she'll say terrible, terrible things. She'll think we're after you for some grave offense, so unspeakable that we can't tell her. So she'll manufacture your crimes wholesale, trying to get us to stop."

"We won't be able to, is the unfortunate thing about that... "

Adam nodded in agreement. "Right. My point, anyway, is that you're thinking that the screaming will be the worst part. It won't. It will be the things she says, at the end. Even if her last words aren't cursing you -- if they're some other plea -- it's the oath you'll remember. You'll blame us, at first, because it is our fault and I'll admit that fact right now, don't worry. But thirty years from now, when you're lying awake at night, you'll be haunted by the thought that it might have been you, after all."

I couldn't put the image out of my mind -- the sight of Amy, Amy who had convinced me that Captain Ahab was a hero, Amy who had reminded me that people could be good and decent at heart, crying out in terror at a fate I had, with the best of intentions, brought down on her head. "What do you want from me?"

"Nothing," said Adam. "We want to hear nothing from you. We want you to continue your work -- your diligent, useful, exceptional work. We want to hear nothing from your random contact, or from anyone else."

"And if I do?"

"All of this goes away. You return to your life, you talk about the classics with Ms. Buchanan for the next few months, and you never see us again."

"Next few months?"

Barbara spoke up. "She's not embarking, so far as I'm aware. You could stay with her on Earth, I suppose, since you seem to want everyone else to. Otherwise, I rather think you're a dangerous combination, and I'm sure Adam agrees. We may have to have her terminated."

"No, that's not good enough. I have the power here, don't I? Really? Even if I agree to let you turn me into an accessory to this little bit of genocide, I can still make demands."

The vixen smiled. "Demands? What do you want?" Then I realized why she was smiling, and I went cold. She was smiling because she'd knew that she'd won -- that I'd played into their hands. That as soon was I was willing to compromise, nothing else mattered.

I was drained; beaten. "I'll call my friend and tell them to destroy the note." It took presence, and thinking, to not say 'my lawyer' -- though maybe they already knew. Maybe they were just trying to break me. I gritted my teeth, trying to keep my wits about me. "I want Amy promoted to class 3, and given a ticket aboard the ark. She's smart, you can find something for her -- I don't even know why she undertested on the PAAs."

"Done -- of course," Adam confirmed my utter defeat. "But you really don't know why she scored so low?"

I shook my head, and the two exchanged glances.

"She's functionally illiterate. It's a real failure of the educational system, that. She seems very bright."